In her first Budget as Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged a £1bn funding uplift for support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) as part of an increase of £6.7bn of capital investment for the Department for Education for 2025/26.
The funding will be used to rebuild “crumbling” schools as well as trial support for kinship carers and foster care recruitment.
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Support has also been pledged for the roll-out of the previous government’s planned expansion of funded childcare hours and the family hubs scheme.
The Treasury’s Budget document suggests that measures to support children’s social care reforms will not be introduced until the annual Spending Review next spring.
However, sector leaders have questioned a lack of measures to reduce child poverty including the removal of the two-child benefits cap, criticising Reeves over a failure to deliver “the systemic change that is needed” to support the most disadvantaged families.
Carl Cullinane, director of research and policy at the Sutton Trust, said the Budget “represents a missed chance to genuinely break down barriers to opportunity by tackling educational inequality and genuinely improving opportunities for those from the poorest homes”.
“This means rebalancing funding back towards schools in the most disadvantaged areas, setting out a clear plan to tackle the attainment gap in schools between the most and least disadvantaged pupils, extending quality early years education to the poorest families, and bringing back maintenance grants for students struggling with their finances,” he added.
The Children’s Charities Coalition, made up of Action for Children, Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Bureau, NSPCC, and The Children's Society, described the Chancellor’s announcements as “tweaks”, saying the government had “not taken this opportunity to invest more strategically in services for children”.
"Piecemeal, sticking plaster approaches to funding have got us to the crisis point we now find ourselves in. Recent decades show that only strategic investment in prevention and early intervention can tackle the root causes of the high levels of children entering care and the epidemic of poor mental health amongst children and young people. It is critical that these first steps are built upon at the multi-year Spending Review in spring 2025. "We welcome the government’s long-term commitment to a child poverty strategy, but we are deeply disappointed by its failure to provide immediate relief to families this winter by scrapping the two-child limit, which would lift an estimated 300,000 children out of poverty immediately,” the coalition said.
Action for Children’s head of campaigns and public affairs, Alice Woudhuysen, added: “The government can’t fix the foundations of our country without breaking down the barriers trapping millions of children in hardship.
“We welcome the measures announced to join up health and employment support, reduce the impact of universal credit debt repayments on low-income families, and enable carers to earn more.
“Yet the continued impact of the two-child limit and benefit cap, alongside the government’s deeply disappointing decision to tighten access to sickness benefits, will inevitably drive-up levels of child poverty.”
Laura Crane, professor of Autism Studies at the University of Birmingham, said: “While an uplift in funding is certainly welcome, this alone will not be a panacea for a very broken SEND system."
Dr Jo Casebourne, chief executive of Foundations, added: “The continued support for Family Hubs marks a promising commitment to prevention in the short-term, and now we want to see an ambitious vision and plan for evidence-based, integrated family support in the next Spending Review.”
Elsewhere, early years leaders urged the government to ensure an increase in national living wage payments and employers’ national insurance contributions are reflected in funding for the struggling sector at the Spending Review.
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, said: “Given that staffing costs account for around three-quarters of setting outgoings, the reality is that the combination of wage increases and rises to employer national insurance contributions will make it increasingly difficult for early years providers to remain viable unless these rises are matched by increases in early years funding - particularly given the government's plans to move towards a single minimum wage for all adults.”
Leitch further criticised Reeves for failing to mention the early years sector.
However, ahead of the Budget, the Chancellor pledged £1.8bn to fund the roll-out of the previous government’s childcare expansion programme which will see eligible children aged nine months and above receive 30 hours of funded early years entitlement from September next year.
